Beyond the Canberra bubble: Rebuilding trust in federal Australia

In this chapter, we address these questions through a combination of, first, a consideration of the· approaches to (and failures of) intergovernmental policymaking under prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, and second, public attitude data as captured by Griffith University's Australian Constitutional Values Survey 2008-2017 (ACVS).¹ We find that public dissatisfaction with the way our federal system operates echoes broader observed trends of civic disquiet with Australian politics, but that citizens put differing amounts of faith in federal, state/territory and local levels of government and remain committed to federal ideals. In studying the Morrison and Turnbull prime ministerships, we find a general reluctance to engage with federal issues, much less federal reform. Instead, the preferred approach has been ad hoc and issues-based rather than systemic, an approach that has only exacerbated service delivery failures and the problems of centralism over the last decade. Combining our analysis of public attitudes and prime ministerial politics highlights the urgent need for holistic federal reform, which is necessary to help restore public faith in key tenets of our nation's political system.